Tips for an Eco-Friendly Passover

Posted on March 12th, 2018

From Chicago Botanic Garden

Enriching Your Holidays

Each year more families “go green” by incorporating environmentally sound practices into their Passover celebration. Here at the Chicago Botanic Garden, we have some tips for making your holiday eco-friendly. We hope one of ways you’ll commemorate this season of renewal is to visit the Garden with your family, to see how the earth is gloriously rejuvenating itself within our 24 individual gardens and four natural areas.

Spring’s promise of renewal fits in with the Passover theme, as the story of Exodus tells how Jews were released from slavery and left Egypt, determined to renew themselves as a people. The Passover seder, centered around food and rich with symbols, is a special time for families to gather and remember by retelling the story in a traditional format (seder means “order”). But, as with so many other holidays, commercialism has encroached upon the sacred nature of Passover, which can also involve a fair amount of junk!

Israel’s eco-houses move towards the mainstream

Photo by Yaeli Gabriely

By Abigail Klein Leichman for Israel21c

Green building in Israel is on the rise as architects and contractors learn to use environmentally friendly materials and techniques.

At a natural building conference in Prague this March, Israeli eco-builder and consultant Nitzan Iserovitch will share how his Back to Earth Community teaches people across the world – including earthquake victims in Nepal – to build affordable, comfortable, durable houses using rammed earth and other local natural materials.

Team builds habitat to simulate life on Mars

Posted on February 26th, 2018

by Benyamin Cohen for FromtheGrapevine

The shelter will be located near a 25-mile-wide, 200 million-year-old crater in southern Israel.

Fans of the 2015 movie "The Martian" starring Matt Damon got a pretty good glimpse of what it would be like to live on the Red Planet. He was forced to survive for four years on Mars' inhospitable surface – unable to breathe outside without a spacesuit and learning to grow potatoes indoors, just to name a few of the MacGyver-esque techniques he had to employ to stay alive.

Is man-made pollution making storms more severe?

by Jaime Bender for FromtheGrapevine

Research shows that even the smallest of man-made particles can intensify thunderstorms, which can lead to soil erosion, runoff and damaged crops.

In case you're still wondering what kind of impact something as commonplace as your car's exhaust is having on the environment ... wonder no more.

A new study from an international team of researchers – including Dr. Jiwen Fan at the U.S. Department of Energy and Professor Daniel Rosenfeld of the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel – found that even the smallest particles from man-made emissions can fuel severe storms and influence weather. That, in turn, can wreak serious havoc on crops and agriculture.